E-WMS

E-WMS Automatic Fulfillment explained

WMS documentation

Introduction

This document describes the functionality of E-WMS Automatic Fulfilment, available from product update 403.

Description

From product update 403, it is possible to let the E-WMS sales order fulfilment service handle the actual processing of fulfilment, and printing of delivery notes in the background. In earlier releases, this required human interaction.

This document has following sections:

Prerequisites
Consequences and limitations
Settings
Activating
Monitoring

Prerequisites

For full automatic fulfilment to work, following is required:

E-WMS Fulfilment Service installed (to be reinstalled after updating to 403 and on any update) and configured properly
E-WMS Fulfilment settings Immediate validation and Immediate processing enabled
E-WMS settings in section Automatic Fulfilment configured
Exact Globe Next print preview must be disabled for the Exact Globe next user, configured as logon account for the E-WMS Sales Order Fulfilment Service
Menu System, General, Settings, Documents settings, section General: when setting 'store attachment as' is set to 'PDF', then setting 'PDF Generator' must be to ExactPDF - NovaPDF is not supported (causes the service process to freeze)

Please make sure that the user, configured as account to run the E-WMS service, has logged on and started Exact Globe Next, and tested printing delivery notes, at least once on the PC where the services are running. Then you are sure that the basic conditions are working OK and printers are configured correctly. In some cases, the 'print preview' may actually not be disabled at all when running from a service, because the configuration may be read from a different file location than expected.

Consequences and limitations

Following are the known consequences of using Automatic Fulfilment:

Return lines (negative quantity) cannot be automatically processed because of the "Returns: process?" pop-up screen
the reports shown when manually validating or processing fulfilments will not be shown or printed by a service
automatic start of printing invoices is not part of this solution, printing invoices has to be started manually
emailing delivery notes is not part of this solution
fulfilment lines which failed validation, still have to be solved in the Control Center, in status 'picking error'
the result of automatic fulfilment has to be monitored in the WMS 'RF monitor'
the WMS Sales Order Fulfilment setting 'Change freight data' is ignored and considered 'off'
you can only use one printer to print the delivery notes: either the Exact Globe Next form printer for delivery notes, or the default printer configured for the user running the E-WMS service
Exact Globe Next printer settings are saved in a file 'exactusr.ini' in a Windows user profile folder, however when running Exact Globe Next functionality as a service, another folder is expected for this file. This can have two consequences:
- the expected (form) printer is not used by the service
- the 'print preview' option is still not disabled, which makes the service process seems 'frozen'

Settings

The settings for Automatic fulfilment are available in Exact Globe Next menu System, General, Settings, Automatic fulfilment. The settings are only enabled when the setting 'Immediate processing' is enabled in settings tab 'WMS Sales Order Fulfilment', section 'Automatic validation'.

Activating

When the WMS Sales Order Fulfilment settings Immediate validation and Immediate processing are enabled, and the settings in settings group Automatic fulfilment have been configured, then the E-WMS Fulfilment Service will validate and process the fulfilments automatically and silently.

Monitoring

The result of the automatic processing by the RF service can be monitored in menu WMS, Reports, RF Monitor.